Wherein I detail my yearly project to enrich my life and inspire others to do the same by creating a unique personal quest that's much cooler then the same old same old New Year's Resolution.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

B Side Surprise ~ The Fourth Voice

So my lovely wife has mentioned that she would love for me to be more editorial when blogging about my yearly project. That is certainly a great point and I promise more of that as we go forward. I took the track I did because the journey of Nirvana is one of growth and metamorphosis quickly over a short period of time and that can best be seen by how their music changed from the beginning to end of their short career. Because their discography only has three entries it seemed apropos to go from begining, middle to end examining what we found as we did. As we touch other genres that are more open another artists who are more prolific I imagine we'll be all over the place and I'll take a more open handed and expressive path. Hell, my next two posts this month where I plan on revealing what I believe to be the secret of Nirvana's success and then the wrap up of my time with them in my final post should be exactly what Mandy is looking for.
Until then we have one more stop on our tour of Nirvana's releases. We've already reviewed the three discs they have on their discography but these guys are more talnented then they realized and thanks to unbridled corporate greed we inadvertently have another winner on our hands. Dispersed amongst the path of any bands major releases there are always going to be a wide variety compilation sets, live albums, singles, covers, etc. Nirvana has a whole host of these, including a fantastic MTV Unplugged recording I porbbaly won't have the time to discuss too much but you should see the video if you can. Amongst the bric a brack was Incestidicide which as it turns out is my favorite of all of their releases.
After Nevermind hit the charts like a tidal wave and even the admittedly crappy Bleach started selling like hot cakes the record company's greed glands started to itch and they decided to milk the cash cow. So between Nevermind and In Utero they released an album with a bunch of songs that were B sides to their previous singles, stuff that didn't make the cut onto the other releases and a few early songs they used as filler for live performances before they had recorded anything at all. The record company threw these together, remixxed a few and rushed it out onto the shelves. Damn I'm glad they did. About half of the CD is full of rejects from Bleach and more of the same thrash mash we've heard before. The first half however is a complete revelation and gave us a voice of the band we've never heard before. The assumption was, mine at least, that with the growth from Bleach to Nevermind they went from punk metal to grunge pop. Surprise, surprise but these sneaky bastards were playing pop all along and just never recorded it. I figure it didn't fit the industrial feel they were going for with Bleach and Nevermind had the a more mature poppy sound and didn't need these tunes so they were almost lost. "Molly's Lips", "Dive", "Sliver"..these along with a few others are amazing songs. Fast, catchy and with an until now unheard vibrancy they sound and feel very much like the Ramones. Also, they have one more magical ingredient. None of these songs were ever supposed to be released. They weren't written with any audience in mind or with any pressure from the studio. These were just old school jams caught on tape and maybe because of that for the first time the band honestly and truly sounds like they are having fun. That permeates these songs and that kind of joy is really infectious. I assume Kurt hated this release too (The dude seriously needed a hug!!) but I loved it and am glad from the jaws of corporate greed we were able to see this side of Nirvana.